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truth

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”, she said. As I slowly walked away from her desk. Life is all about last looks, this one was no exception.

I imagined myself doing different things with my life. Going on different adventures, then what was happening before me. I never imagined coming back home. I never thought that failing was an option. As I always do, I picked myself up and started over. Starting over by going home until I come back to this fucking city. I am going home to regroup then come back to this town to be somebody. Anybody then the person I was before. Not the broken person I was when I came here.

Big cities don’t take to kindly to lonely hearts. Broken people don’t always find what they are looking for. But I will be the exception. The exception to the rule.

I walked away from her office and watched the room glitter with the sunlight. The same golden color. The same sparkle from the afternoon sun. What I would give to be outside but instead, I am saying goodbye to everything that was familiar.

Life doesn’t prepare you for goodbyes. Life doesn’t prepare you for last looks and the words that haunt you after. Instead, you move forward and hope for the best. Praying, wishing, hoping, that all of this will be a distant memory. Just another story to add in the book of life.

It’s been six years since I have been back. Six years and I still feel like like a visitor in my hometown. This doesn’t feel like home but neither did that big city. Which is why I felt the need to burn my bridges and watch them crumble behind me.

Yet, those words haunt me.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

As I make another last look through the glistening rays of the sun behind me.

I feel like I have lived a thousand lives. Ones more tragic than the next. Then the sun hits every inch of my skin and I feel born again.

Different.
Brand new.

It’s the shadows from the golden rays that peek through the blinds. Straight from the outside, for I am always inside. It’s neither cold nor warm, just this glittery feeling of gold etched in your face and every parts of your skin. It’s what photographers try to photograph and emulate. With artificial lights and colors. Holding still until the light is just right.

It’s through the shining of this magic hour I think of everything. Every sun drenched memory. Every crazy golden moment. My breathing gets slower and my eyes start to well with tears. Each tear sparkling with the effervescent sun.

If I loved you last, I would love you best, I kept telling myself. I say this to the shadows that wave with each motion of the words. I don’t know what love is anymore. We are all rose gold and amber in this light. We are all love in this glittery way of speaking. We are all warmth in this sunset of light that we see before us. Yet, I don’t even know who the “you” is anymore. At this moment is could be anyone. I could have loved you more. I could have believed every single word you said. Instead, I find myself talking to shadows to keep away all these ghosts.

We were once all silver and now we’re gold. In this golden hour, one of the loneliest moments. As the gold sprinkles across its flecks on ever inch of the white room. When you’ve let everything go, it’s when you start all over again.

If I loved you last, I would love you best.
The sun sets and the darkness overcomes us.

It’s the street where we grew up. It’s the block where we came from.
To the people who look like us, who talk like us, that grew up just like us.
No matter what people say. People can’t help but think we are all the same.
We are loud in the quietest of places.
We are overly expressive in the sounds of the oppression.

We are the bad bass on every street corner. Playing the same played out Chente song.
Big banda, cumbia, salsa, ranchera songs that your heart can’t help but mimic into heart beats.
Watching your head sway as your feet mimic the beat in your Nike Cortezes and your Converse Chucks.

It’s Domingos in the church in our Sunday best.
Clutching our Jesus pieces and praying tomorrow would be better day.
Light a candle to guide your way, because Mañana is another day to be extraordinary.
As we rush through the rituals and sign of the cross at the entrance of the wooden gates.
Paciencia y fe, as we look to the cruz.
Paciencia y fe, because we have nothing to lose.

We are bright colors on your plain unmarked white walls.
We are Graffiti on your pristine street signs.
We are Old schoolers playing oldies as if time never skipped a beat.
Los viejitos on the front lawn in their lawn chairs with the same stories of what could have been.

We are big hoops and bright red lips.
We are the loud printed fabric that clings to our every curve.
Ladies with the big bags walking on the sidewalks in the sunshine.
Always places to go. Always places to be seen.
Walking out the streets like this week’s Vanidades cover.
Even when you mocked us. Even when you said we were too much.
Mucho mas y todo eso.

We become your aesthetic.
We become your mood board.
Your own reflection of cultura that you seem to know more about then me.
We become what every young person thinks they know about but they never truly lived through. Because if you knew what we lived through can’t be taught, until you lived through these breaks. You can’t scream out our words in the attempts of filler space.

Latino and Proud isn’t a t-shirt you can put you.
Latino and Proud isn’t this seasons look in this month’s Vogue magazine.

You ask me where I am from.
You ask me where I am going.
We all beg to leave but afraid we stay.
We can’t be proud.
We can’t be who we are.
Unless it better fits your mood, another look to add to this month’s pinterest board.

So, when I tell you I am Latino and proud. I watch you shiver in places in your newly bought huaraches. Hiding behind your $99 dollar serapes that the urban commercial markets be capitalizing on.

You want to be like us.
You want to act like us.
You want to take everything from us.
But don’t let us be proud of who we are.
Until the next season fad shows up.
Another culture to add to your bookcase.

When the chorus comes in, don’t forget where you’re from.
Latino and Proud, then on to the next song.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that sentence. I would probably be out of debt by now.

I try my best to bite my tongue. Because no one wants to hear what I have to say, let alone care to hear where I come from. If they only knew how many times that happens. How people often talk to you in Spanish because they hear the thick accents of your parents. How people assume you don’t know a lick of English. How people assume that you were born in Mexico and ask you questions about where you are from.

My Mom would tell me how ladies would look at her and ask what part of Mexico my brother and I were from. When she would reply, “They were born here”, they more then often would repeat the question. They would ignore her. Because her accent gave her away. You’re not from here and neither are your kids.

Growing up people always asked how I spoke English so fluently. Because the minute they saw my name on paper, they went straight to my last name. Didn’t matter that my paperwork was in front of them. All they saw was my last name before they saw me. I remember how my childhood friends parents would talk. Talk as if I wasn’t in front of them. I was always “that little Mexican girl”. How it was amazing how the little Mexican girl can enunciate her English words. Just as fluently as the Spanish words come out.

How do you speak without an accent? Is your first language English or Spanish?Why is your English so good?

I wish people would stop talking. Or when they try to be funny and talk in Spanish to me. As if my language is a party trick for their amusement. After they had second guessed my English.

It doesn’t matter what I say. It’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear my accent. They want to hear me mess up my words and be there to correct me. They want to prove a point that no matter how many times I say I was born in the States, they want to tell me I am from Mexico. They want to hear me get angry in Spanish. They want the Mexican to come out of me.

One day, people are not going to like what I have to say.
One day the taste of blood in my mouth will not hold back my tongue.
One day I am going to say “Funny, how English is my Second Language and I speak it better than you do.”

But I won’t dare. That’s what people want from me. Instead, I bite my tongue. Allow my mouth to overflow with the blood of my tongue. The blood that keeps me together. The blood that keeps me sane. I have learned that at this point, it’s not worth a fight. It’s just best to let this all go.

My English is good because I was born in the states.
My English is good because I was born in the states.
My english is good because I was born in the states..

If I don’t write this down, I will forget something. All I want is to remember everything exactly how it happened, how it felt. Not miss any single piece of it. Either way posting feelings in my head and down on paper, I am bound to forget something. I will forget feelings, placement, settings, smells, every little detail that make up moments that I am desperately trying to remember.

It’s hard to explain it to people. To people that didn’t live the life I did. That didn’t follow a band or a piece of music because they loved it. Nobody will understand that. How it felt to stomp your feet, clap your hands, and sing every line from your favorite song out loud for all to hear. You start remembering basement venues in sketchy parts of towns, filled with cigarette smoke. Remembering salutations and how fearless you felt at 17. Night thats went on forever, until the lights came on. I can’t talk to a single soul about it. I can’t ask someone how it felt to meet people or see places or conversations I kept in my head. Every day I want to forget but the melody brings it all back. It’s never how far I’ve come but it’s where I’ve been. How I got this far and why I keep coming back for more.

Going on airplanes in route to home, brings back memories of things that have happened briefly, but really was just yesterday. You can’t go back, you can only move forward. Yet things that happened so recently tend to come back like a distant memory. You think about everything and everyone. Moments, feelings, and how perfectly they wrap themselves up in a soundtrack of songs I used to love. A different variety of things but as you grow up, your heart forgets, moves on and dies just a little. I don’t remember why I hate the things of my past but yet I can’t help but succumb to the nostalgia of it all. I hated this band, I hated the people, I hated the music, because they brought back with these memories of a person I don’t recognize anymore. I get it. We all have to grow up sometimes. We all have to get jobs, pay bills and grow up from the fucked up kid from yesterday. But can’t we just pretend we are back there? Back to the 18 year olds wearing dark eyeliner and black hoodies. Back to this notion that we can stay 18 forever?

Peter Pan has his Neverland, where he stays childlike forever. Where do I go to be with the feelings of my younger self, with the wisdom of my adult self? I miss that. I can sing loud and along with the best of them. But still I miss that even as we get older we lose track of who we used to be. I don’t want to be 18 forever, but I want the feeling of pretending I want to. If I could take it all back I would. Take back the sounds, the wounds, the life in the memories. How easily melodies become soundtracks pierced together in our lives. How feelings go as season leave and yet we can’t forget them. Was I missing out or always there? The fear of missing something that wasn’t always there. The photographs you take and the feelings trapped inside of them. Am I missing out?

I am attracted to liars. People that stretch the truth farther than Pinochio’s nose ever could go. Their personified existence that stand in the balance of reality and dreaming. Words are more believable than actions, everyone knows that. Oh, how I love the words that spill out of your tongue and out onto the open spaces of air between us. You’re always right, and I am always wrong.

You think I don’t know that everything you say, never matches up to what you mean. That every single conversation you expect me to believe, is just another fabricated idea you wished were true. Because a lie is far too beautiful to be untrue. Lies are more beautiful than the vicious honest truth. I love words more than I love people, because even people let you down. But words? They’re just little letters and sounds that clutter up open spaces.

Will you let me down? Will you let me down this time?

Standing tall on clouds and building castles in the skies. The words you say in the clear cold air becomes the clouds that fog through the city and the streets. People never want to hurt you. People never mean what they say. All they want is for you to believe them and never leave their side. Tell me what I want to hear, tell me all the pretty things I need to believe. Tell me everything and then when I am gone tell me nothing in return.

Everything you say is lies and every day I keep fighting for whats true. Every single day I believe you and every single time I know that it’s not true. But then a light shines down from your clouds, down from beneath your castles, and in that moment I believe in you just a little bit longer.